Gaurav Desai is professor and chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at University of Michigan, and former professor at Tulane. His talk is titled "Crabs that Rule the Tide of Destiny: Imagining the Ecotone in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide" and is presented as part of the Carole Barnette Boudreaux '65 Great Writers Series which will bring Amitav Ghosh to campus for a public lecture on March 15, 2023.

Ghosh's The Hungry Tide set in the ecotonal region of the Sunderbans of Bengal, first published in India by Ravi Dayal in 2004, has, in the nearly two decade since its publication, become one of the “go-to” texts for literary scholars interested in bringing an eco-critical and environmental perspective to the study of postcolonial literatures. In this paper, I touch on some of the readings it has generated but more importantly on a few aspects that call for a re-reading especially in the light of some of the work that has followed, including Ghosh's own The Great Derangement and The Nutmeg's Curse.